School proprietor and pupil die due to fire (PHOTO)

Dr Peprah Agyemang, proprietor of PA Capital Preparatory and Junior High School, on Friday died

of shock when news reached him of the fire that had gutted a six-classroom block of the school.

A four-year-old pupil, Alex Opoku, also died in a stampede when he was run over by some of the pupils who were fleeing the fire.

An eyewitness account said information about the fire was first communicated to Dr Agyemang, who went to the scene but collapsed on seeing the state of the school, and was rushed to the Sunyani Regional Government Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The bodies of the Dr Agyemang and little Opoku have been deposited at the regional hospital mortuary, pending autopsy.

The injured pupils in the stampede were also rushed to some nearby health facilities and the regional hospital for treatment.

Assistant Divisional Officer III (ADOIII) Francis Gaisie, who is the Sunyani Municipal Commander of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), who confirmed the incident to the media, said his outfit had a call at 1300 hrs of the fire incident and quickly organised his men to the scene.

He said the fire situation was very intense at the time his men arrived at the scene; it “had reached the ceiling level whilst the pupils and the staff were running helter-skelter for their lives”.

ADO Gaisie said although the primary block of the school had already been burnt so his men managed to bring the fire under control, thereby preventing it from spreading to other parts of the school.

He said initial investigation by GNFS revealed that the fire was started from a nearby old cemetery behind the school and spread to an area of the school, where a gas cylinder exploded and intensified it.

ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson

An Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. He holds first degree in Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ghana; Political Science (major) and History (minor). He has also pursued MSc Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) at the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow (YALI) who studied at Clark Atlanta University on the Business and Entrepreneurship track. His mentors are Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffet, Sam Jonah, Kwaku Sakyi Addo and Piers Morgan